Published
The Democrats are responsible for the wildfires in California. Republicans are the reason we have climate change. FEMA manufactured the hurricanes in North Carolina. The government controls the weather. These aren’t just clickbait headlines or comments buried in the caverns of X. These are statements I’ve actually heard in conversations among educated, well-meaning adults. And that terrifies me.
A few years ago while studying abroad in college, I took a trip to Corfu, Greece, in late October to meet up with some friends. As we meandered through the sleepy town in its off-season, an older Greek woman offering handwoven textiles at a street market stopped us dead in our tracks. “What are you guys doing here?” she asked. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe.” She warned us of an impending storm, one that would bring severe flooding. Okay, we shrugged. Sure, thanks for the tip. We walked on in search of gelato. There had been rain in the forecast on our weather apps all weekend, and yet every day had been blissfully sunny. We’d take our chances.
That night at dinner, as we sat outside an eerily empty restaurant on a covered porch overlooking the Ionian Sea, it started raining violently. The downpour pierced holes through the tented ceiling above us, soaking our plates of grilled halloumi.
It was a kind of rain that made me see how populations could believe in Greek mythology — looking out at the flooded streets and clay mudslides, you can’t help but feel the wrath of Zeus. The next morning, my taxi hydroplaned on the way to the Ioannis airport. We took an extra hour to get there because the main roads were underwater. Somehow my RyanAir flight lifted off into the angry skies (a bit concerning in itself), and I made it safely back to Spain. But I learned a valuable lesson: listen to locals and heed weather warnings.
In no way am I comparing the otherwise dreamy weekend I spent in Greece to the recent string of natural disasters devastating cities across the globe–from the unprecedented fires that ravaged tens of thousands of acres of beloved homes, schools, churches, and businesses in L.A, to the series of Earth tremors forcing mass evacuation among residents of Santorini.
I only recall this story to demonstrate how nature humbled me that particular day.
We thought that the woman at the market was a misguided Oracle. But really, we were Icarus, flying too close to the sun. We were foolish travelers, ignoring the warnings of someone who had lived through the storms before. It’s a lesson I worry more people in this country will have to learn as we face increasingly extreme and frequent natural disasters.
In 2024, there were 27 confirmed climate-related disasters with estimated losses exceeding $1 billion each in the United States, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Such events included droughts, flooding, severe storms, tropical cyclones, wildfires, winter storms. This is above the annual average of the last five years, and three times the annual average of 1980 to 2024. The average cost of such natural disasters has increased 1250% since the 1970s.
Meanwhile, President Trump recently stated that FEMA should be “terminated,” while his administration looks to potentially halve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration workforce from 12,000 to 6,000 employees, effectively nullifying the agency that provides climate and weather research, with services such as the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center.
Unlike employees in the private sector, it will be difficult for those 6,000 federal workers who have devoted their lives to conducting niche research in marine biology, for example, to find another job. But the unemployment effects are a meager consequence compared to the regions that will be at risk when residents no longer have free access to mainstream information that would allow them to make predictions and preparations around the weather. Potential changes to the agency, such as those proposed in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, threaten to privatize information that is entitled to citizens on the basis of their basic rights to safety.
On top of this, low income communities are already at a higher risk of experiencing a natural disaster–and at a higher risk of being displaced by it–as evidenced in the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Harvey.
False accusations, such as the anti-FEMA propaganda recently promoted by Elon Musk, for example, are damaging in their attempts to politicize natural phenomena that affect all beings and undercut agencies that exist to protect all people.
Rather than pointing fingers at political opponents, we should address the real issues at hand– our planet’s fragility, not that of our own egos. Afterall, Earth has no political affiliation. We seem to have forgotten that weather, despite how often we try, and fail, to manage it, is one of the few things that remains beyond our control. The saying used to go, “you can plan a pretty picnic but you can’t predict the weather.” Now the saying is, this must be someone’s fault.
To forget that this land is on loan to us, to think we are entitled to this planet and all its resources, ignores the glaring truth that other life has existed for billions of years before us. Sharks, for instance, have thrived for over 400 million years, about 1,350 times longer than humans, yet we are driving them to extinction in a mere blip of history. This is the height of hubris.
When our fellow Americans are caught in the grips of a natural disaster, we should show up with compassion for our compatriots, offer donations and resources, not conspiracy theories and mass lay-offs.
Wake up America–our wings are made of wax.
